The way we love each other despite ourselves and the universe is insatiable. You’re the feast to my starving poetry, and I’m scrambling after you trying to unscramble all the pieces you let trail behind; I’ve spiraled into puzzling over every detail of your face and the imprints on your heart and the things you’re never really saying but silently radiating

The way we love each other with our whole arms and our whole hearts beating up against one other, magnetism pulling our bodies together all close and warm until our skin is melding and there is no more feeling or air, only lightness and the white behind your eyes

And even then, it isn’t enough—

that can’t get enough of you feeling, so tragic and profound, how it makes you move
different, that sudden onset
of warmth (and how that cool can pull you down so low)

analyzing you as if you aren’t equally a mess as I am, and you’re so deeply beautiful to me, even if the universe can’t see it yet


And yet but despite ourselves, and the universe

stumbling bowlegged through the last subway car,
loose-fit black rags bandaging frail limbs,
face twisted in a permanent scowl,
matted grey hair jutting from a flaky scalp,
she jangles her paper cup of coins
each flail of the arm a sharp crescendo;
I flinch.

She extends her hand with a gaze that says: pity me;
I cannot look. I don’t want anything to stir in me,
my own pain is already too heavy,

but --

here they are: spoiled thoughts wafting over me like the waves
of her robust stench: warmth
between my thighs,
tattoos
bounding up thick muscular arms that aim at me in such earnest that my disillusionment melts away, and I am paralyzed
by the lure of pheromones and the smell of skin
which doesn’t quite leave you after you leave him.

And then truth clangs hard in my chest:

but her bones are made of steel!
So who am I to look away?
Maybe if something were to crash into me,
I’d pulverize
into
dust.

Siempre sabía que eras demasiado como una nectarina
a principios de verano. Tú: sin poros y brillante e insinuando dulzura.
Me llenaste con tu erupción secreta, luego me apagaste
con tu lengua plateada y elegante,
lava palpitante en mis tímpanos,
realzando mi sangre,
con fuego en tus ojos. Yo era una ciruela, vagando hacia su calor agustín. Mi piel tierna cedió a su toque hábil.

Pero luego lo mordí. Probé la carne bajo tu brillo brillante.
Y ¡oh cómo te traiciona!
Tan amarillo e inmaduro, tan tenso con la novedad,
Aún aferrado al brillo del alba,
primavera congelada con miedo
de la oscuridad de mi néctar.

Hoy me desperté aquí con un imán en mi estómago.
Ecos de metal frío recorren en mi garganta.
La falta de amor, el dolor que
corre entre las penumbras aórticas--
la esperanza, un refugio tragado por la noche efímera.
Siempre sabía que eras demasiado como una nectarina
a principios de verano.

you were too much like a nectarine
in early summer. All poreless and bright
and insinuating sweetness. Filled me up
with your secret eruption then shut me down
with your sleek silver tongue. Lava barricaded my eardrums,
enhancing my blood, fire in your eyes.
I was a plum, stealing forth
in the wake of your Augustine heat. My tender skin
gave way to your deft touch.

But then I bit down,
tasted the flesh beneath your glossy sheen
and oh how it betrays you!
So yellow and unripe, so taut with newness,
still clinging to the brightness of dawn,
spring-frozen with fear of the darkness
of my nectar.

Today I woke up with a magnet
in my pitted stomach. Echoes of
cold metal scour my throat. That love-
-less twang in the aortal penumbras--hope,
a refuge swallowed by the ephemeral night.
I always knew
you were too much like a nectarine
in early summer.

I was never looking into you
I was only pouring an image of myself onto your canvas
Of course I didn’t know
it was me looking into me
this was the mirage of my desire
always in the shape of a question mark
and you
a sweeping mystery
oozing something toeing the peculiar line between *** and titanium (cold, edgy, sharp - trembling
between pain and principle
like blazer and tie
or more like halfway-unbuttoned-shirt-and-slacks on-with-no-tie
(it was like you were making an effort!))

It was ***
but it also wasn’t ***
(I am empty
I am full)

I keep building up and up and up
all these images in my Mind
(which never shuts up)
(a never-ending narrative
She spins and spins and succumbs
only in those rare and passing circumstances)
constructing people like buildings
only the scaffolding is imaginary and when
the architecture folds in on itself
soulless
and my beloved figurines come toppling down on me
why do I still get so surprised
so stung
so lonely in that
hollow and distant way
(like your Mind is echoing
in on
Itself)?

My Mind is like quicksand
devouring streams of memory with ease
forever unsatisfied and craving more of the same
sharp edges and all
praying for a satiation in some distant future
She knows will never come

Only here
in this tiny universe
can I spell out anything resembling rationality
from the mess and junk and tangled tendrils of my Mind
Only here
can I extract bits and pieces of thoughts
and try to puzzle them together
until they make sense
until I can separate “Me” from “Reality"

And what doesn’t make sense
what I need to understand
is why I feel so beset
with this heavy magnetism that
overpowers me to the point of
paralysis
(with little to no room for breathing)
and why it was you
who pushed me into this feeling
and you
who is still pulling me along
far past the threshold of my resistance
and I am done
and it stings

I know what I want:
It
You
This
Us

Hands pushing
heartbeats pumping
syllables into temples
leaning in
to your liveliness
hooked on
your sleeping bell,
there we are:

Sitting in a smoky attic
creaking in uncertainty
Teasing out vibrations
invading our airspaces,
I'm explaining to you
the legal differences
Between licensees
And invitees but neither of
Us remember why,
there we are:

Climbing back down to earth
You disappear first:
A wordless fixture cloaked in blackness.
I blindly step forward to follow you
But the wood caves and I come
crashing through
the ceiling
feeling
nothing

But you
Entrenched
in your magic haze,
Suddenly snapping
forward poised to
Envelop me just
before
I shatter.

It was dark but I could see you better.

Maybe neither of us are explained away
by stereotypes,
our identities
mired in contradictions
more like intricate mirrors
than we could have ever imagined.

And all
You worried about
Was me
And all
I worried about
Was how
you were going to explain that hole
in the ceiling
to your mom.

I can't trace the crown of my indifference towards you (or anyone else) to a definitive source.
Whether you are strung to me or I to you,
our union imports
several interpretations.

You might be like fishing wire:
binding limbs, constricting movement;
if I deviate, I suffer your sharp cut of resistance.

Maybe you're yarn: soft, nurturing; but again, any move that falls outside the lines of your predicated design--any undue tightening or loose end--results in chaos.

Or perhaps you are the hand that draws the line:
you, the invisible puppeteer
who governs my every wayward glance
or dishonest act at the whim of your object, your desire;
one string leads to the
magnetism of your cologne
and another, the heat
of your knees in fitted jeans
against mine.
If it be that,
then, my indifference would serve as my aide,
a final desperate cling to autonomy.

But what if we were both cast
in the same web, rendered useless
through entanglement, would we
claw towards each other, content
though the silk grows thick
with every reach?
Would we tear our way to liberty?
Or if we were to find that thing-
the source-
and cut all ties,
would magnetism wind us up again?

If I unravel, what would you do?
If you unravel, would I leave you
in a pile at my feet?
Would I cast dead strings aside
and embrace the freshness-
raw and bleeding but alive-
beneath the rage?

The finality and profundity
with which you broke me
has hardened me;
I feel now I have nothing to fear.

Except I'm encased in a glass jar;
An invisible boundary neatly capping
how much I can let myself feel.

And the rims of this glass jar
are curved and heavy.

We are renters
Living off leased land
Never land owners
Years of finances poured into revolving doors
and recycled down into intricate designs creeping beyond the
comprehension of the reasonable woman
(or man)

Why do we fear so much the need for one another?
Desperately flattening desire into hardened emotion
We can't even breathe properly anymore
Oozing smoke and conspiracies out of our pores;

anxiety became our lifeblood

One you peered at and collected data on
in the confines of your tantrum
journal
You with your diamond eyes
Looking at me through
a purple looking glass window
haze and wondering
about me
It was a distant curiosity
Removed
Detached from itself
and from me and from all the loose
and heavy vessels
that connected us

I picture myself crushing
an orange, star-shaped pill.
Pressing a bit into your palm as we exit your RV.
"I probably shouldn't," you hesitate,
but I press on.
"Just try a little. You'll like it. I promise."
So we taxi away,
lacing sticky fingers around each other
and plastic cups of beer.

We lean into electrifying music
that sounds like an emergency room or an ongoing migraine,
but the tremors feed us.
You pluck a styrofoam light saber off the ground and hand it to me.
I watch its blues melting into greens dripping into reds and orange-yellows and it is the most beautiful thing in the world.

You claim you don't feel It,
shrugging all cool and nonchalant.
So what’s with your magnetic gaze,
or the way your trembling fingertips trace my lips?
Why are we tangled up like this, all wordless and gooey?
And what about your pupils—the way they are filling up your eyes?

“Well,” you concede.
“It just makes me want to have *** with you.”
But it’s more than that!
Every moment vibrates with magic!
And all I want is you
and the sensation of skin
against bare skin
and to be enveloped in that warmth again.
I relish the blurring of our lines,
the way I can’t tell when my trip ends or yours begins.

And in the hours that creep towards the sunrise we plant
ourselves on the dock.
Fill our lungs with smoke.
Count the patterns moving through the lazy black tides.
And you tell me all these profound things you’ve never mentioned before.
And I forget almost all of them.

But the thing is
We are falling in love.
You could never say It,
so I have to.
And I don’t want it to feel intense or weird—
but there’s intensity and weirdness already
brewing beneath the surface of our interactions and
now that I let It in
you feel too far away from me
when you’re only across town.
And there’s not enough of you
to swallow me whole
And It scares me.
And It comforts me.

Because you love me
even when I can’t bear to be loved,
and I unravel
because somehow I know – I’ve always known –
that you’ll never hurt me
worse than he did.

He leaves
a perpetual question mark

Closes a gap
opens a new one

Buries me
In burning drags
And powder

I am a pawn, a
Vague magnet

Easing myself
Between the
Lines
I expect to
Fill

what will happen
to the rooms I filled with clothes and books
and shoes and plans and bodies?
And where will I keep
my unchecked desire for love
within the folds of this fierce
barren
town?

When people accuse me of
being emotional or
oversensitive,
of playing the victim,
it invalidates me,
and then I feel small
and then furious tears brim my
emotional,
oversensitive,
victimized eyes

But as I'm trying to explain this
to you over cold chicken wings,
I go glassy and red with shame
because your words just put a cap
on my emotional allowance
and suddenly I see you
as just another dead end,
a road that leads
to an unlived life.

Are you a man or a prop, and am I
a fly from a web--
detaching, leaving weak limbs behind
in its grasp?
or am I the lone spider--
she who disorients
then releases
just before
venom hits
vein?

I see the back of his head waiting for me
at the entrance,
his hair spread thick with gel
a scar trickling down his left eyebrow,
and I stand silent.

Two roads down, you sit by yourself,
blanketed in burnt-orange light,
dagger hair freshly trimmed.

I am south,
climbing into his car, which gasps,
suffocating in empty bottles,
loose papers, the rags of existence.

Meanwhile, you watch bodies wordlessly
flash across white screens,
surrounded by your
amber-glass army,
waiting for no one.

He breathes out words
with closed ears;
a tender staleness invades the space
between our seats.

I know he is searching for me,
but he reeks of
danger and indecision
and so
I choose.
I choose to run.

the stones were loud
bright and brilliant
greens blues purples clears and whites
affixed with personalities
each reminiscent of a singular identity
smoothed by boundless currents
once warring above them and
gentrified by silent
woozy sand

i sealed the stones
in small white envelopes
each bearing a name
in inky looped letters
i taped them beneath your desks
told you they were magic and
you believed me
so they were

Thank you for being nocturnal with me;
for kissing me on the cheek
with your grizzly jaw,
for letting the silence between us speak
for itself.

Thank you for dreaming
of Greece
and music festivals
and road trips,
and for carrying my friends across the busy streets
and for laughing about it;
for holding me in that perfect way
that makes me feel safe
and loved.

Thank you for letting me bounce around enlivened with energy
and never asking me to slow down;
for never complaining when I wander away;
for staying;
for treading softly and living free.

Thank you for astronautical mornings, sweltering afternoons spread out in rainbow grass,
and for smoky nights;
thank you for being the last one on the dance floor with me.

Thank you for horses grazing on the beach,
and for log cabin jacuzzi hazes,
and for unfalteringly
hoping;
for huddling in a tent in soft white sand;
for believing in me.

Dear friend, you feel like home to me,
so let's keep chasing
dogs through the streets and trekking through sewage tunnels and
watching hours fly away from us like a swarm of gulls on a Mediterranean beach.

You know me:
a fickle girl, afraid
to commit or admit or abstain,
yet all the same,
thank you
for being my
friend.

It’s not just pain,
it’s hotter,
brighter,
more compelling.
It's heartbreak-love,
the kind that tears you apart inside
and yet awakens you
to the silenced realities to which
most are blind.

It is a pull, a lock that
hooks inside of another
person drawing
them to you
indefinitely.
You feel like a magnet
at all times,
crushed when he looks at you
with those sad, terrified eyes
which beg for hope.
You are crushed for him,
crushed for his pain.
Always wanting
to keep him
close to you, to give him
the warmth you
somehow know
he needs.

No one will hurt you here,
you want him to know.
You’re safe with me, I will protect you.
You want him to be happy,
more than you care
about your own happiness:
that’s heartbreak love.

And it's always the loners,
the lost souls,
the obscured escapees,
the ones with the shaded expressions and watering, orb-like eyes,
the ones with the smiles that don’t quite touch light into the face,
the kind that drains life out of you,
yet leaves you needing more.

He’s my boy,
that’s how you see it,
how you experience it.
He’s yours,
and you would do anything
to protect your child.

A single digital phrase
makes me throb, makes me warm,
raw-
hungry,
inarticulable:
the hunger, the thirst, the clawing through
his hair push him against
the door
with
force.
There was a glistening in the room,
a hard glaze
puncturing every moment
like a swift knife, brute
yet gentle the way
the stinging sharp
cold blade feels
against the seal
of
skin.

I feel it like a twist in my spine: momentary paralysis, a choke on the truth
I declare I'm better than this! your lies, your blatant deceit.

But she exists: giant lips and hair and pale eyes against ravishing olive skin;
A vision of exoticism.
Yes she exists: undeniably, in photographs and in the world and probably in your hands and in your mouth and in your bed
and she probably breathes in the same spices and sweat I too succumbed to,
She exists.
And you lied.
And you owed me nothing, as people never really owe each other anything.

And these pangs
Feel all too sickeningly familiar;
this time I promise myself
not to turn the other cheek,
not to ignore hard evidence, which condemns and reveals the harshest morning-after light
but my eyelids betray me; my mind is set to rewind, it can't get past
your soft mouth or your smooth chest or your voice saying "if you steal my heart, you can tell his father...." or your piercing eyes that felt like danger and freedom and wanderlust intertwined and
I know
putting you on paper is just further validation and permanence
both of which
I seek to avoid.

But I need to speak this pain because it's still moving
inside of me;
How can you, perhaps one step beyond a total stranger, gut and roast me like this? Ripping open wounds from years past,
as if all that scar tissue never
formed in the first place?

Her eyes, your solemn witness
are so unlike mine

I am untamed!
a loose humanoid chained
in gold
always spinning
under high beams
like it's no big deal

(while you reside
in your mind)

but why
can't I dream too?
I wanted you
to stay
you energized me

(every contact
left me broken yet intact)

Hallelujah!
You're outside!
Traced your face
in refracted light
Stand-still silhouette
Crop her
out
Fill the void
with blackened foil
while she makes nasty
public announcements
(and loves the attention
creating irrelevant banquets
and barbecues)

This was never my war
so hold fast to us
or crawl or
meet me at the door--
Wherever the blame feels
a little less
and confess
I was the one
you were looking for

Happiness is not something you seek.
It's not a location or another person.
It's not latent or inactive or waiting for discovery.
It's already there, your invisible garment.
It's a choice you make daily--a perspective
through which you decide to see your life.

Thus happiness is perpetually within reach.
You could be zoneless, drenched in darkness,
hollow-bellied, devoid of material,
the traces of your footsteps long-faded,
and yet,
you could still be
radiant.

There was a fence, it was
white, it lined the road, the road was
made of stones, the air was
always hot and sticky, holding moisture
the sun felt dry and prickly
on your skin, the grass was stiff and long, like straw, extending
into an invisible backdrop.
The sky was vast, wrapping around the farmlands, the trees,
the quiet grass, the yellow and
white and pink houses with frayed wooden doors. Peach and
violet clouds splayed magnificently
across this sky at sunset like smears of paint. Trucks and cars
bumped down this narrow,
hidden path as the days trickled into
nights.

When you’re thirty, you’re supposed to know
things already. You’re supposed to have
your **** together. A wife, maybe
even a kid. But this man still felt
like a boy. Shrugging life away
with cigarettes stealthily
torn from the box,
afternoon breaks
whistling through the
scabby throat, weeping silently
into his cigarette, smiling empty through
the golden tint of a pitcher of beer. Sadness sat
in his eyes and it never seemed to go away. The sadness
made him look younger, more innocent. He thought no one noticed.

But someone did.

Once, I bathed in anxiety,
soaking it all into my follicles and letting it slide
between my bones and through my muscles like ice water.
And I reeked.
Others couldn’t stand to be around me.
I became an inhuman symbol,
something robotic and unfeeling.

Then, I reached the peak of hypocrisy--
rejected sparkling convention yet was
simultaneously enamored with it.
I binged on harsh words
aimed at diminishing my sense of self.
I was a frail,
98-pound girl
looking into the mirror
and seeing only excess.

Throughout, I was weighted with bruised limbs--
from being grabbed too hard and pounded too rough against the floor,
and broken down doors and cracked cellphones--
which my father threw violently against the wall.
I watched the glass shatter and end tables topple
down at my mother’s feet,
her eyes wide and glassy,
her face fallen.

Once, I stood naked in a sputtering shower
and slammed my fist
—twice—
into the face of the person I loved
the most, leaving him
with a haunted
eye.

Then, I picked a flower from the sky.

Throughout, I cried because my father left me,
while pretending I was only crying
about a sad song.

These days no longer belong to me,
but the voices are still there.
And the ache.
And the fear.

Is a werewolf locked
Inside of a heartbeat drum
A perpetual dance
Of unapologetic freedom
A tribal chant
A lick at your neck
An endless fiesta
Whistling through the window
Fat rolls of color, urging forth
Fires on the roofs
Embers burning bright
No lanes
Speeding and rushing
Murals of eternities painted on the city's cheeks
Abandonment of muscular restraint
Grains of salt on the rim
Limes, avocados, salsa verde, picante, roja
Burns in your esophagus
Corners of the mouth ablaze
***** warm air
Rushing in
Burns your eyes
Peculiar washroom smell
In irrelevant spaces
Plumbing creaks overhead
Christmas lights on terrace tops
Glass eyes seeing all
Swollen night
Bodies in heat and dark, all hands and sweat and breath
Give a hug to a toothless stranger
Who shows his gums as he swings from pole to pole
In front of the grand cathedral
Toll the bell
Fingers dipping in and out of everything
Hot street meat and browned corn
Put a gummy bear on top
Coat yourself in orange powder
Cha chi di dum *** *** ***
Let's go

I never recovered when you told me goodbye
I just told myself the person I loved had died
I still think of you when I am alone in my bed
I still drink, eat and smoke things to cloud up my head
My heart still feels too heavy to gaze at your face
That'd take me too deep to an unsettled place
I'm too sore from your grasp to even know how it goes
With someone else, the seed fits but still never grows
I still name you my captor, I'm never quite free
From your desperate ache,
broken ways,
and how somehow
you
occupied
me

in* feels
underwhelming but
out feels
distant and
peaking towards the whiteness feels
a little too much
like your hands on my back and looks
like your bared teeth damp face and hungry eyes hurting for me so the
aftermath feels
a little less
like throbbing pain while
before feels
like a
dream.

i barely know you
i know more about nap experiences than i know about you
i know you have a brain
i know eyelids carry all the gravity in the world sometimes
i know everyone has body parts that have been in places they should not have been
i know everyone has forgotten about time for a while
i know you the way i know about time
i know it lingers in the back of your mind while it waits for you to think of it
i know about ironic sunshine
how it stings those days you can barely open your eyes
i know this isn't the right way to live but
i know that it isn't wrong either
i know it's uncomfortable to remember things you aren't sure whether the other person remembers
i know there were moments you felt closeness without having verbal confirmation of it even though the avoidance of your eyes deeply
mystifies me

Warm moist
Thigh dark meat lingers
Like a cowboy's drawl
In your cochlea

I didn't know if
pulling it from the wreckage
would feel as good
the second time around.

I dragged it shoulders first and
it felt heavier and damp and the body gave and
lurched forward, unarmed and broken like trash strewn
across the road slick with black wetness
and silent like
a ranger at
quiet
sea.

Make Space between our bodies,
it once told me,
and find the dirt
in the cracks
on the ceiling of
what used to be
a brand new home.
(Greasy handprints on white plaster never
stay invisible forever.)

For without Space
there is no silence,
just the deafening explosion
of skin slapping skin slapping across bone crashing into knees connecting joints at the sticky side of muscled electric adhesion; breathing becomes mutual, then
stops.

the stuff that makes me loud while
the mind whispers softly, reminding
me not to speak
about the pain

the stuff that makes the eyes' luster dim
around the edges
(but we're always
evolving
behind
the eyes)

the stuff that makes us fitted
or whole or pierced
or shed or Other
or perpetually looking down
at our own interactions

the stuff that makes me hypothesize
you across the table
as fitted and whole or maybe
you are broken and barricaded

either way
I want to know you
and
your
warmth,
and
your drift
in the attention span
(can't count to five
seconds without
changing
activity constantly drifting
in and
out
of
life),
and
your electricity, and
vulnerability,
and
your ease in
knowing me differently
than I'm used to,
and
your affection concealed
with halfhearted punches,
and
your inability to Be
without fully Being

the stuff that glides
warm and
burns
down
the
throat

Give me words
Until they mean nothing
Wrap me in their meaninglessness
Until I feel nothing

The only thing that's real
Is your energy

The way you walk with
Uneven footsteps and laugh
Too often at unsaid jokes
Shakes my core

I'm coming undone
Too much weight to carry

I am changed
People notice

Intelligence breeds anxiety
Or is it ignorance?
Which one overtakes me?

Which energy
chooses me?
Clings like a shadow to my back?
Claws and controls me?

Maybe I'll find what I'm looking for
In New Orleans' haunted
Purple gold walls
Streets slick with death
Drenched in a
Clownish haze,
Maybe I'll weep there,
Let it soak

I drank all your shame while I was
Sleeping
You left greasy fingerprints down
My back and they
Spread across my stomach like
Wildfire, my branches
Split like black veins cursed
Coursing with black blood
Evil
What voice speaks inside of me
Now?

She says I've lived in too many places
Too many energies have made love to me

Where is my identity?
Which voice do I know is mine?

An unsung chorus:
Bathe in salt, she says
Cleanse yourself in sunlight
Stay alone

So why am I so afraid to be alone?

I need you to tell me
Everything will be
Okay
?

My hands were shaking
Not as hard as yours, I'm sure

You almost lost everything and I
was forced to watch,
bearing silent witness to a
destruction not my own
but at which I felt at fault,
thus I digested it as my own

Who knows?

In my mind, I had lived fantasies of
something like this happening--
you, helpless, I hold fast to your life and then
salvaging you, just barely,
scaring us both out of life and then
falling back into something new--
dark, strange, and yet intimate

This has happened to me twice now (for real)
and neither time was nearly as glamorous as
I had played out in my mind

(I'm a stupid girl)

Both times I felt drained of a vital energy I couldn't
call back--ever

I became an echo
of me
and us?
we were skeletons of
the children we once were. Both times
robbed me---
of sleep, and years, and appetite.
robbed me---
of innocence, and soul, and
love
which always
bleeds out uncontrollably
in times like these
unclottable

and out with love
spreads guilt and shame

(I'm a jinx, I'm a cursed girl)

across the tar, filling the black empty
cracks with invaluable energy

Full of foreign weight
cargo stored too long
too far pushed down our throats
too removed

My hands were shaking
Not as hard or as long as yours
I'm sure

she's not perfection
she's big lips and eyes and sometimes people thin theirs at her in skepticism and dislike because of how she moves and smirks but
she's not perfection
she's awkward inside and self-deprecating
she's always afraid she's not quite right, off-kilter, buried far too deeply in her own misperceptions
she's not clean
she's tried every dangerous experiment offered to her, and
sometimes she feels like she's given too much of herself away,
because she wasn't sure what was important
enough to keep.

she's far from perfection, she's tainted
and she feels
a deeper emptiness than anyone could guess,
even though she will take the time
to heat her hair in perfect curls
and pick out the outfit that fits just right so that no one notices
the hurt inside and if she layers on the makeup to look natural so her eyes don't look so tired, she'll look brighter and smarter and less fazed and then maybe she'll appear to be closer to
the perfection that she's not,
cause she's a wounded deer, vulnerable and broken apart
and longing for the happy family she never had
trying to create her own reality
amongst all this vast and amazing
chaos....
aren't we all?

i feel like an alien in my own skin
scratching through flesh trying to get back to myself
echoes of my youth ringing in my ears, clawing to get me
back to the way i was before
all the scruffy chins scratched up
my face, making me red and raw and exposed,
before hands meant electricity to me,
before i lingered for anyone other than
a ******* stuffed animal, and
before lips meant excitement and awkwardness and
even *******. i'll just
sleep all day to forget who i am and
remember who i was,
if she's still out there
somewhere.

that feeling when (your) finger tips clutch (my) bare skin
veiled in casual apathy
we watch the screen in silence
not knowing what to say

i don't know what went on
behind your flickering eyes
as for me, the moment of contact
sent jumpy tingles up my spine

unexpectedly
my mind reeled forward
to unspent nights in dance clubs or backyard barbecues;
the way your hands felt in mine when we leaned in
lips still intact--
unbroken

her smell—
clean, unobtrusive and vaguely pleasant—
chemically-produced lemons.

I’m not offended by it
but I wouldn’t wear it.
I wouldn’t even use it
as an air freshener.

It would probably give me a headache after a while;
if it were any stronger,
any more vibrant and yellow,
then I’ll bet that even just one whiff
would send dizzying
tinglies into
my
brain.

for love in other
people to forget
our own
emptiness.

The end was a hurt, a low throbbing of the temples, a panic in the chest.
The end was a purple circle, an eye sunken in more deeply into its socket than the day before.
The end was an end; the end was “The End.”
The end was a notebook underneath a mattress we lifted up to pull the sheets over them, beige and freshly cleaned and still smelling faintly of detergent.
The end was when the words scribbled in slanting, harsh ink entered into my mind, into my soul, burned itself into my face.
The end was when I looked back up at him, and in my face, he saw something had changed.
The end was when he pushed me against the wall in a dark corner, glow lights like floating heads in the darkness around us, when I felt the heat of his chest, the controlled strength of his hands pressed against my hips.
The end was a feeling.
The end was his roommate’s 21st birthday celebration at a club in downtown Atlanta, when we looked out over the balcony at the sprawling city waiting below us, waiting for us, alive. When we talked about our futures, our careers. I was to be an English professor – he, a corporate lawyer, a politician, a businessman, anything lucrative. I would do what I love, he would create our life with the profits gleaned from a more conventional career path.
The end was when he left for Prague, or when I left for Spain, when we stopped speaking on the phone every day, when the connection fell flat and disintegrated.
The end was when I socked him in the face.
The end was when I read the words that spelled her name, the girl before me, and how he had missed her---was it when we had been falling in love?
The end was when I learned he described my body not as beautiful but “full figured” – for these were the truth, the contents of the mind.

In theory, the end in our story was written
before we had even begun.

Beauty Queen
Miss Q
Thinking of you
;-)
:-)
...
?

Post-apocalyptic characters flash white
against a twilight screen
Tiny, shiny meanings begging for responses
But I won't feed
these visions of nothingness

Since when did I become
bound to this ubiquitous pretense,
since when did I become
cast into these tiny webs roping me inextricably closer
to the "you" I just met yesterday and
since when did we become
like spineless eels
caught dumbfounded
in these fishing lines
of textonomy?

This ain't swag
and if it is,
then your swag
makes me want to regurgitate
la salsa verde y los tamales de pollo
all over your smooth and crisp
white shoes

Can't someone untie me from these social knots?
I want to go back to ink-blots,
conscriptions, Polaroid photographs,
X's and
abandoned
I's

When I think of those nights we spent together,
damp with sweat on your unmade bed,
I shudder in disgust.
You are a stranger to me,
as is the person I was when I was with you.

I’m not sure why you’ve come here.
I am staring at the patterns on the ceiling.
You ask me what I’m looking at.
I feel irrationally angry
and I snap at you to just shut up
because I know you don’t see what I see.

Suddenly I feel heavier.
I turn to face the vents on the wall to my left.
The menacing sharp horizontal lines droop down slightly at both ends.
I don’t like the way they are looking at me.

You are nineteen,
and I am watching you deteriorate.
Your eyes are a shadowed mockery
of themselves.

I tell you,
There is fire in my head.
My hands are turning to ice,
and that pinecone is green and furry.
I think it lives.
But you don't believe me.

And we walk among speeding cars,
trying to figure out how to cross streets and how to
close spaces that never stay glued shut
like silver elevators stuck.

It used to be that your heart
beat so hard against my back
that I couldn’t sleep,
but I didn’t mind.
I liked the way the scruff of your chin felt
against my shoulder blades.

And I’m sorry for all those times I kissed you and never meant it.
And I’m sorry for all those times I did.

So why is my shadow lying there on wet grass
if I’ve already left and gone home?

These things have a way of coming back to me—in ruinous circles—finding me where I left them… in dusty basements and creaky porches… in faded streets and quiet bedrooms.

The reality of the past is always etched into the present—rattling impatiently inside of my brain—and histories are tangled up inside of me.

Histories of:
Small blue, hope-infused amphetamines to flatten my voice and keep the screams from falling out,
Thick, heavy dope to muck up my lungs and ear canals and all the basic doors of my perception,
Cold yellow wine that frosts up the glass, to take me to a summer barbeque at my uncles’ in Puerto Rico.

But you are a knot in my chest that feels good to unravel.
So listen.
Listen.
The world is playing for us.
The world is playing us.
And the world is just playing.
Over and over again every morning;
every morning it plays over.

Like a silent black-and-white film:
the sunlight from the window hits me square in the face,
warmth trickles down inside of me like gold,
filling cracks and empty spaces.
I ride the train downtown to your house and crawl into your bed.
I am in a phone booth,
pressing the cold black receiver tightly to my ear,
twirling the silver cord in my hand,
bitter words stuck to the back of my throat like scabs.
My imperceptible tears seep into the little black holes in the receiver,
and I wait
for them to reach you.

We are in transit,
but we never meet in the middle.
Every morning.

Listen to my bones.

You decide if time goes forward or backward,
whether the earth begins here or ends, say, right over there.
You name things into Reality.
Bones, flesh, skin.
These are concepts, works of fictions we tell ourselves in order to feel real, or whole, or assembled.
But we are bags of blood.
Our only reality, our only truth, is feeling.
And feeling too much.
Like how the whites of my eyes are permanently reddened by an invisible fire’s breath:
the glow of your face.

Every morning plays over like a silent black-and-white film.
I am nowhere: I belong to the realms of the in-between.
I am the glint of light in a thread, the starlight, the particles, the grainy matter sliding between your fingernails.
I run through beams of light on buzzing highways, I am in the walls.
Now I am far away and you cannot see me.
It’s physics.
It’s ******* physics!
I can see it all before me: the infinite equation.
I am free. I can do anything.
I can become the light and the voices and the bells and the twinkle in a pigeon’s eye.
By the time you read this,
I am gone.